Genosimulation (A Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction): A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller by L.L. Fine Page B

came.
    Not without doubts. Not without considerations. Not without
falling into despair again and again, and not without canceling one ticket only
to book it again two hours later.
    Zomy did not bother to talk to her about it. For him, she
thought, it was obvious she would leave everything and go to New York. It
angered her. I’m actually doing him a favor! She did not owe him anything. On
the contrary, he would owe her his life.
    Hopefully, at least.
    And how dare he? How dare he ask her that, then ignore her!
Treat her as if she were, as if, well, obvious.
    But finally she came.
    Maybe something inside her would not let her abandon Zomy in
his time of need. Maybe it was something that her scientist’s mind would not
let her miss - so fascinating an experiment, so fateful. And maybe that
something was the female psyche which knew that Zomy treated her so, not out of
arrogance or disregard, but out of fear.
    Fear of disappointment.
    So she came, finally. Took an urgent vacation on the grounds
of wanting to see the family (which was true, in part). Did everything
regardless of him, studiously ignored his presence, as if a brick wall
separated them. He on his flight, she on hers.
    And she came.
    And now she cursed the moment when she’d agreed to go with
him, take a vacation, meet in New York, rent a hotel room, connect to the
monitor. Inject the virus.
    Peck, Fitz. Peck Fitz.
    And he began to flutter.
    She ran to him, quickly preparing a small syringe, sticking
it in the hand muscle. Then, having no other choice, she tried to restrain his
twitching hands, and after a few seconds just climbed on the bed and lay down
covering him with her body, trying to mitigate the epileptic movements. She
tried to think what medication to use against them.
    And she couldn't find one. Her stock was so limited.
    Saliva began to erupt from his mouth, and his eyes rolled
back… long sequence of coughs… getting worse, getting weaker, more shaking of
his body.
    Lia began to cry, as she struggled to keep him on the bed.
    Deep in the lungs of Zomy, she knew, every moment, millions
of small hemorrhages were being created, at the same time as the planted virus
penetrated into millions of lung cells, splitting the nuclei of the cells, and
make them only God-knows-what.
    She, herself, could only guess. Would viruses really only
replace a small section of DNA in another section, almost exactly the same, and
then stop working? Or, maybe they wouldn’t act according to her plan? And maybe
now that they were free of the syringe’s boundaries, they were replicating over
and over and over, rippling along the branches of the Tree of Knowledge,
erasing all traces of leaves and of its original fruits, twisting him out of
action?
    The tics passed, and Lia fell heavily over the bed.
    Zomy was still breathing. Very weak, very shallow, with only
slight expansion of the thorax, accompanied by the sounds of bubbling and a
trickle of blood from his nose and mouth.
    She felt a sense of relief. Finally there was a problem she
could handle, something which she could really help. In cold, mechanical
movements, she put an airway tube in him, allowing free air passage and
connected him to a compact respirator. This caused a dramatic change. Breathing
became more regular and deep, precise to the beat machine. The change, of
course, said nothing about what was going on inside. The destruction continued
there, no doubt. And Zomy's life hung in the balance.
    The question, in fact, was arithmetic. If the bubbles in
Zomy's lungs could still absorb oxygen and transfer it into the bloodstream,
Zomy would live. Apparently. If not, if the damage to the cells would be
irreversible, or if too many cells ceased to function at once, simultaneously,
Zomy would choke to death.
    It was an equation. Simple, finite, respirator or
ventilator.
    The pulse accelerated to nearly 190.
    And again she began to think of a cure, a modest mix she
made herself, to inject in case - but then, with a